Daniel Lubetzky

In fifteen years since founding PeaceWorks I’ve never seen a line get such swift wide acceptance.

KIND PLUS is gaining such traction because it’s the only line in the functional and nutritional bar category made of all wholesome ingredients you can see and pronounce.(TM) 

What does this mean?  All other lines in the category are "slab bars" – made of emulsions of hodge-podges of blends of undetectable ingredients.  Why? Well, it’s much less expensive and easier to make a bar from emulsions – from date paste (in the more noble cases) down to chemical compounds and artificial ingredients like high fructose corn syrup. But you lose integrity, nutritional value, texture and taste.

It seems deceptively simple to provide functional properties – like Omega-3, Anti-Oxidants, Protein, B-Complex, or Calcium – in a bar made of all natural fruits and nuts, without adulteration or emulsion.  But it was a challenging effort.  After several years of development, we achieved it.

You can learn more about KIND PLUS here.

As warned in this earlier post, companies like Coke, Cadbury and Kraft have so abused the term "natural" that they are gradually destroying its meaning.  It is really upsetting that they dupe consumers with products containing High Fructose Corn Syrup and other ingredients that are harmful and cause diabetes and obesity.  It is even more upsetting that their misleading advertising causes mistrust in good products and causes consumers to lose faith in the "natural" claim.

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Pom Wonderful just came out with a new product that seems sooo weird to me – coffee drinks with pomegranate juice – but you can’t say they are not extraordinarily innovative and that their marketing is not at the cutting edge and refreshing.

Copywriters will admire the site: http://healthybuzz.com/

The product reminds me of when we launched many years ago at PeaceWorks the Raging Raspberry Chipotle sauce from Azteca Trading Company – which flopped for many reasons including that the flavors were a bit too "ahead of their time" (a year or two later a ton more Chipotle-infused spreads came into the market, but they eventually also died out).

But POM has such an awesome marketing muscle, has been such a remarkable leader in the food industry, and consumers seem to be looking for "buzz (energy) plus health," that this could be a big hit.  On the other side it could hurt POM’s parent brand – which I associate with all natural fruit, not with coffee.

I am curious how consumers will react

Looks like Tzipi Livni won the Kadima primary, a relief for those who want a steadfast continuation of peace efforts.  Now Israel is moving to national elections, where the next challenge for the direction of the country lies.

A new social psychology study asserts watching meanness and aggression on TV rubs off on viewers. If true, we are in for something.

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Interesting WSJ article about "guerrilla marketing."

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If you do nothing else today, make sure you view this – The Story of A Sign – La Historia De Un Letrero – it is well worth it.

http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO

(and it happens to be shot in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a town my Mom is from)

Having dinner at Candle 79, the waitress introduced herself by asking
if we’d like to start the evening with ‘some filtered tap water.’

She won us over.

That this felt unusual is a sign of how ridiculous our world gas
gotten. NY restaurants nowadays make big profits from selling you
bottled water, even though Ny tap is as good as any, and far more
environmentally sound.

Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos
.

Nice example of grassroots social entrepreneurship to help the poor – follows the biblical tradition of sharing some crops with the poor, with a twist.

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Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on the decline of party affiliations in America. Not a minute too soon.

Partisan politics and behavior have hurt the US as much as anything, if for no other reason that they exacerbate extremist positions and foment extremist factions.

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